Preserve me, O God, because I hope in You.
I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord,
You have no need of my good things.”
To the saints on His earth,
In them He magnified all His will.
Their diseases were multiplied;
They hastened after these things;
I will not join in their assemblies of blood,
Nor will I remember their names with my lips.
The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup;
You are He who who restores my inheritance to me.
Portions fell to me among the best,
And my inheritance is the very finest.
I will bless the Lord who caused me to understand;
Moreover, until night my reins also instruct me.
I saw the Lord always before me;
Because He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken.
Therefore my heart was glad,
And my tongue rejoiced exceedingly;
My flesh also shall dwell in hope.
For You will not abandon my soul to Hades
Nor allow Your Holy One to see corruption.
You made known to me the ways of life;
You will fill me with gladness in Your presence;
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Psalm 16:1–11)
Who has ever given Him anything, since “from Him, and through Him and in Him” are all things? The fount of life is that highest Good that bestows the substance of life on all, because it has life abiding in itself. It receives from no one as though it were needy; it lavishes goods on all and borrows from others nothing for itself, for it has no need of us. It says, too, in the person of humankind: “You do not need my goods.” What is more lovely than to approach Him and cling to Him? What pleasure can be greater? What else can he desire who sees and tastes freely of this fount of living water? what realms? what powers? what riches? when He sees how pitiable are the conditions of kings, how changeable the status of their power, how short the span of this life, in how great bondage even sovereigns must live, since they live at the will of others and not their own.
Ambrose, Letter 29
Since He had said approaching His Passion, “My soul is sorrowful to the point of death,” it was right for Him to use these words to recall the Resurrection, teaching that in place of that discouragement He will be in unceasing joy, having become immune to suffering, to change, to death, even in His human nature. As God, you see, this was always the case, and of course even in His human nature once formed in the womb it was easy to provide Him with this. But He allowed the nature He had assumed to travel through the sufferings so as by these means to loose the sway of sin, put a stop to the tyranny of the Devil, undo the power of death, and proved all people with the basis of a new life. So as man He assumes both incorruption and immortality.
Theodoret of Cyrus, Commentary on the Psalms 16.8
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